IUCRC Phase I Boston University: Center for Systems Innovation at Scale (i-Scale)

规模系统创新中心（i-Scale）是一个由美国国家科学基金会（nsf）赞助的工业大学合作研究中心（IUCRC），在东北大学和波士顿大学设有分支机构，致力于解决数据中心规模计算的挑战。这些大规模共享系统是当今计算领域中普遍存在的一部分，并为与行业相关的研究提供了独特的机会。i-Scale中心在软件和硬件层上大规模探索这些计算系统的挑战。它通过与大规模开放云联盟（MOC-A）和马萨诸塞州绿色高性能计算中心（MGHPCC）的合作，利用不同学术用户的计算需求来为研究提供信息，并为评估和转化为实践提供途径。该中心进一步利用开源许可来促进大学研究人员和工业合作伙伴之间的合作，允许在大学环境中难以实现的水平上进行工程和系统构建。随着计算规模的增长，计算机系统的学术研究人员面临的挑战也在增加，因为观察大规模的真实用户、应用程序和系统变得越来越困难。i-Scale与工业伙伴和大型学术计算装置合作，这些装置作为计算机系统研究的独特工具。i-Scale研究侧重于大规模计算的各个方面，波士顿大学的研究重点包括数据存储系统、可扩展操作系统、硬件加速器、隐私和经济学、编程模型、节能和弹性计算以及基础设施和设施管理。i-Scale不仅致力于推动数据中心和计算技术的发展，而且通过与行业赞助商和开源社区的合作，将这项研究转化为实践。通过与大型计算前沿的公司和开源项目合作，该中心为本科生和研究生提供培训和关键经验，以发展与行业相关的技术技能，并为课程、课程和波士顿大学开发的开放教科书提供输入，以使教学与该领域的最新发展保持同步。i-Scale支持的研究项目将为数据中心规模系统（包括私有云和混合云）的新技术开发提供广泛的好处，这些技术是当今计算领域的普遍组成部分。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Center for Systems Innovation at Scale (i-Scale) is an NSF-sponsored Industry University Collaborative Research Center (IUCRC) with sites at Northeastern University and Boston University, addressing the challenges of datacenter-scale computing. These large-scale shared systems are a pervasive part of today's computing landscape, and present unique opportunities for industry-relevant research. The i-Scale Center explores the challenges of these computing systems at large scale, across both software and hardware layers. It harnesses the computing demand of diverse sets of academic users to inform research and to provide paths for evaluation and translation into practice, via partnerships with the Mass Open Cloud Alliance (MOC-A) and the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC). The Center further takes advantage of open-source licensing to facilitate collaboration between university researchers and industrial partners, allowing engineering and system-building on levels difficult to achieve within a university environment. As the scale of computing grows, so do the challenges facing academic researchers in computer systems, as it becomes increasingly difficult to observe real users, applications, and systems at scale. i-Scale collaborates with both industry partners and large-scale academic computing installations, which serve as unique instruments for computer systems research. i-Scale research focuses on all aspects of large-scale computing, with research thrusts at Boston University including data storage systems, scalable operating systems, hardware accelerators, privacy and economics, programming models, energy-efficient and resilient computing, and infrastructures and facilities management. i-Scale works to not only push the boundaries of data center and computing technology, but to transition this research into practice, in collaboration with its industry sponsors and the open source community. Through partnership with companies and open source projects operating at the cutting edge of large-scale computing, the Center trains and provides key experience to undergraduate and graduate students in developing industry-relevant technical skills, and provides input to coursework, curricula, and Boston University-developed open textbooks to keep teaching abreast of the latest developments in the field. Research projects supported by i-Scale will provide broad benefits from the development of new technologies for datacenter-scale systems, including private and hybrid clouds, that are a pervasive part of today’s computing landscape.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.